Eureka Springs City Council met for a special workshop Monday afternoon to discuss establishing an ordinance amending Title 4 which would allow for food trucks and/or trailers at special events. Mayor’s assistant Kim Stryker provided a draft ordinance and stated that the Zombie Crawl was the event that brought this to importance. Stryker said the event grew so large in 2018 that it was estimated more than 7,000 people were in attendance in a four-hour time period, exceeding the abilities of the city to adequately provide food and restroom facilities.
Therefore, the city began preparing its infrastructure to handle the masses of visitors for the 2019 Zombie Crawl and any other large event in the future.
The discussion of food trucks started with what qualifies as a special event? Currently, the staff determines if the special event qualifies for special accommodations, and trusts the event organizer to provide estimates of the number of attendees and the type of welcome it would receive from the permanent businesses.
For example, the Eureka Springs Historical Museum is sponsoring the Witches Escape festival on Oct. 11 and will be occupying the majority of the downtown city hall parking lot. City staff approved the event and provided the accommodation of renting spaces ($9 each parking space) for the food and festivities. When asked if these accommodations would be made available for any special event the answer was no – these accommodations are made at the staff’s predilection.
There is not a written policy or ordinance that determines who is allowed or when someone can rent the city parking spaces for special events. Alderman Melissa Greene said that other committees have levels of scale to determine magnitude; she suggested a scale of one to three, where one would be a small parade and three would be a large-scale event such as the Zombie Crawl. Currently the mayor and his staff make this decision.
Asked what would merit the closing of a city street for a festivity, the answer was that only the mayor can decide when to close the streets.
Discussion shifted to where the food trucks could locate during a large special event, with the draft ordinance saying either on city property or in the locations of the food truck lottery. Alderman Mickey Schneider stated that there is urgency for food trucks in the downtown locations but the closest downtown location for a lottery food truck is in the Chelsea’s parking lot which is not in the most easily-accessible location for downtown events. She suggested using the loading zones, but the food truck lottery ordinance states a food truck will not be located within 100 feet of a food establishment. Aldermen Terry McClung and Susan Hartman agreed that the visitors can eat on their walk back to their cars, since the closest food truck lottery locations are on the outskirts of downtown.
McClung said the question should be posed to the downtown restaurateurs if they have an opinion of how to handle food trucks for special events. It was mentioned that current restaurants could vend their food on their sidewalk as long as they do not obstruct the flow of sidewalk traffic.